On Writing: Essential Story Elements

In grade-school English, you were probably taught about plot, theme, rising and falling action, the climax, and so on. And that was good; when you're reading a story, those are sometimes useful to consider.

But when you're writing one, there's a difference. You're there to say something, to create, to entertain an audience and possibly even inform or enlighten them. You have goals, and hopefully none of them is "to pass this class".

Thus, naturally, what you're looking for is almost entirely different — you don't sit down and think, "Now, what's going to be the theme of my story?" No, if you're like me, an idea occurs to you, a wicked smile appears on your face, and you think, "Wow! That's cool. How do I write that?" Which is the real trick of the thing, and just to complicate matters, every idea works differently.

There are some things every good story has in common: relatable characters, a location the reader can envision, action that makes sense, some sort of struggle or puzzle or conflict, and a change, whether in the characters or the world around them.

Sounds simple when we put it like that, doesn't it?

Learning how to make each of these happen is a vital task of the writer, second in importance only to achieving mastery of correct usage. In that, it's like any craft: once you've learned how to use your tools, determine how best to apply them to the materials at hand in order to produce something functional — and, if possible, something extraordinary.